The End Is Very Fukcing Nigh
by Vlad Taltos
Summary: It was an early fall day. The sun was out and shining, it was warm, I could hear birds chirping merrily outside, and zombies were clawing their way through my door. Rated M for graphic violence, harsh lang., and sexual situations. On Hold.
1. Distracted

The song for this chapter is "Story Of A Lonely Guy" by Blink-182

Itaituba, The Amazon, Brazil

_[__I'm not sure if this was worth the trip, because the story I'm coming to get a first hand account of has been made into something of an urban legend in most of America and Europe since the war ended. This_ latest person has been incredibly hard to contact because of the remote, dangerous area. Vast stretches of charred trunks and ash that was once thick rainforest show how far the people here are willing to go to get rid of the undead that attack their village. I sit in a small hut with a lanky, American man of thirty six. He has wildly long brown hair that obscures most of his face and various weapons are strapped to his person. Although he himself is stringy and frail looking, it is obvious that he makes up for this in some other way.]

Alright, I'm pretty sure I know how this is supposed to go. You just want me to tell you my story, right? How I got started? Where I was when the shit hit the fan?

_[I nod]_

Ok.

_[He grins momentarily, probably remembering something from long ago]_

It was an early fall day. The sun was out and shining, it was warm, I could hear birds chirping merrily outside… and zombies were clawing their way through my door.

_[He pauses and rubs his chin in thought]_

Umm, no. I'll back up a bit farther.

The Great Panic. The Great Panic didn't have much of an affect on me. Everyone was scared that zombies were going to come and kill them, scrambling for the last scraps of food in a store, running to Canada as fast as their energy-hungry pickup trucks would carry their fat asses. Things like that. My dad just completely ignored all of that, thinking it was all just a hoax or a scam (which he was right, we never bought a single pill of Phlanax), and he continued with his day-to-day things, scoffing at the panicking idiots. He went to work, he bet on the horses every Thursday and Saturday, hell, we even went to a concert together just two days before the main swarm of zombies came through our rural, red-neck small town in central New York.

The reason I let my dad be so oblivious was because I was taking matters into my own hands. You see, before even the Great Panic, I was ready for a zombie invasion. I'd seen zombie movies and read zombie comic books, things like that, I and was simply _fascinated_ by them. Whenever I was bored and in a new place, a friends house or at some distant relative's birthday party, I would look around and think about the best way to defend the local from a swarm of stumbling, flesh eating dead people. So when I heard rumors of a possible zombie invasion I spent that week's allowance on a thirty pack of water bottles. Then next week I went to the Army surplus store and bought an old machete, an extra from 'Nam. I had read that one book, um, I don't remember the name now, but it was supposed to be about how to live through a zombie apocalypse. I think it was by, uh, Mak Bronx, or something. I went through the lists of stuff it said to have. When I had what I thought was most important on the lists I just waited. I didn't panic like the idiots running around like chickens with their heads cut off, and I didn't ignore it like Dad. I was prepared and calm.

In the month before the town was swarmed you had the normal stuff; traffic jams on the nearby thruway, small outbreaks that were put down quick, occasional shooting, sirens. You might have some trouble sleeping, and if you were really unlucky one of the "small outbreaks" would come crashing through your living room window, but other than that you just kept doing normal things and hoped the stories were all a hoax. That's why people in, oh, Chicago, or something, were caught with their pants down even though NYC had been overrun for days and the rumors had been confirmed by the Yonkers broadcast. I like to call it human stupidity. So the schools were still open, everyone knew Something was going to happen very soon and they all just sat around on their fat American asses. It was during this time that I met Faye.

The day after I got the machete I went to school and when I walked over to the place where my friends usually hung out before school there was a girl I hadn't seen before. She was a little taller than me, had a pearly complexion that was pale but not sickly and, most striking to me at the time, shiny midnight-black hair that fell past her shoulders and far down her back. Her face was a little rounded and there was a little to much of her to fit the "olympic goddess" look that most guys go after, but all of this was irrelevant as I continued to look at her perfect, beautiful hair. As I walked up my friend broke off the conversation to introduced us. Her name was Faye she had moved from Germany.

"Hello, I am Faye," she said with a very natural accent. I had a Dutch teacher who's accent erased a few consonants in a way that grated your nerves like a whetstone, but Faye's accent was perfectly liquid. Although you could tell she formed the words in a different way, it wasn't incomprehensible or unpleasant. It was like she took the words and reshaped them to fit her mouth instead of trying to force her mouth to imitate the way American's talked.

I smiled and said, "Hi, I'm Jack."

"Oh, you are Jack? The lady in the office told me to show this to you. She said you would be able to help me today." You would think that, having had Jack as a name for sixteen years, I would have gotten used to it, but when her accent caressed the word the way it did I thought she had said a whole different name. Goose bumps rose on my arms as her voice gently swished back and forth in my head. I barley had the mental capacity to keep composed as she handed me a piece of paper with a school schedule on it. It said "Faye vonReiniger" on the top and, having almost memorized my own schedule already, I noticed that she had most of her classes with me.

Now, here I should point out that at the time I had had very bad experience with girls. I remember that I had written a poem earlier that year about the four times I had previously approached girls and the four times I had been shot down in a spectacular fashion. Apparently being steadfast in your pursuit of a girl does not result in her eventually falling for you, like in the movies, it results in her eventually becoming so annoyed that she practices her right hook on your face. I bring this up because at the time I was faced with a serious dilemma. I knew I liked her and she was going to be in close proximity to me all the time. How was I supposed to not act stupid? That is what I did around girls back then, act stupid. Not intentionally of corse, but that is what usually happened. So I just nodded to her and tried not to stutter as I said, "Okay, well your first class is Advanced Art. The bell is going to ring soon so we should get going."

We had art together and I mostly stayed out of the conversation. She talked with my two other friends (both girls, but one was lesbian and the other had a boyfriend, so I was able to be myself around them), and from being in the group I was able to learn about Faye as she answered the usual questions that I myself would have choked on if I had asked them. I found out that her father had acquired a moderate amount of money in engineering and had moved because of a job offer that had then went up in smoke because the company had gone bankrupt. He was very angry at the whole american way of doing business because it was fueled by scams and had led to the world wide recession. She said that he was really just pissed that the job had fallen through, but he liked to look at the big picture and blame the underlying causes. She said that was also what made him a great engineer. They had enough money to last with no income for a long time, but her father had found a low class job anyway so that the reserve money could be saved and spent on a house when he found another engineering job. She said that they really didn't have much money, but her father had done research on the american housing market before they left, so he knew that they didn't need much money to buy a house.

The day went on and I showed her to the classes that she didn't have with me. The ones that she did have with me the teachers usually placed her next to me because, as they put it, I was supposed to "help her with the transition." I was more than willing to stay with her the entire day and help her, but that left me with a problem: in the future, how was I supposed to act normal when she was always there? Sooner or later I was going to do something really stupid. And this was beside the fact that, other than getting to the classes, she didn't need my help. The teachers anticipated that she would need to catch up with the other students. They could not have been more wrong. Trig, American Lit., Chem, it didn't matter. She could answer any question they threw at her. In Art she started the project that the rest of the class had been working on for several days and, even while answering questions from my friends about why she had moved, she still completed more than I had done in a week, and made it to a higher quality than mine.

She also had lunch with me, which was nice because the few friends I had been able to make since the beginning of the year (it was my first year at the school) did not have lunch with me. So I led her through the line that led to a bunch of crappy, greasy heart-attack-on-a-plate and when she frowned at the horrid selection I showed her the secondary line that led to the salads, fruits, chips and pre-made subs. She got a sub and water, I think, and I got my usual 2 rolls, apple and chocolate milk. We sat down together and after a minute of silent eating I asked, "So, your pretty good in school, aren't you?"

"Yes, well, the English class was very simple. I have read most of the books on the reading list already. Also, before we moved I would often go to work with my father after school and he showed me some of the things he did. Engineering involves art when you draw blueprints, a good knowledge chemistry so you know what any one material's limits are and complex math, much more sophisticated than Trigonometry. So far everything has been easy."

I replied to this astounding bit of informa- wait. I'm getting way off track here, aren't I? This part doesn't have anything to do with zombies, do you want to here it?

[I tell him it is his story, if some of it does not involve the living dead, that is fine.]

Well, I'll just pick up the pace. So I learned some things about her, she learned some things about me. She seemed perfect, I tried not to seem like an idiot. I found out that there was one subject that she was not good at: American History. First, it was a bit different from what she had learned, and second, it was one of the few things her dad had not personally tutored her on. So, because she needed help with it and I was good in it we soon had an after school study schedule set. She took school very seriously, something I had seldom seen in the other kids at my school, and it was something we had in common.

The first study meeting was at her house, which happened to be a motel room because her dad might have to move if he found a job, and went well. I met her dad, who was a bit heavy, (it seemed that was where Faye got it from) balding, and had looked as pissed as a high earning engineer that had to work at Denny's because he'd been screwed over by some American asshole. I couldn't really blame him, and although I could easily tell he was mad he was very polite to me and thanked me for helping his daughter with her school work.

The next night me and my dad went to a concert. Then two days after that was the second study meeting, which was at my house. My house was a hellhole, with just me and my dad living there and neither of us being able to sweep a floor to a reasonable level of clean, so in preparation I had cleaned off the large coffee table so we had a place to work and planned on not letting her see the rest of the small apartment, especially my room. My dad was planing to go to the track at 5:30 (it was Thursday) and I thought I had everything I needed for the few hours she would be at my place.

Now, because I was thinking of Faye all the time, I had completely forgotten the fact that zombies were attacking. The machete and case of water bottles were stuffed into my closet, forgotten, instead of being ready to be used next to my bedroom door. The small supply kit that contained what _I _had considered to be important was in a backpack, lying under a coat next to the TV. The plans I had made for defending the apartment, possible escape routes and destinations, places that weren't likely to be looted, all of this was at the back of my head, ready to be forgotten if I drew a blank under pressure. So when, halfway through the study session and about an hour after my dad left, a strange pounding came from the front door I was _completely _unprepared.

AN/ Faye vonReiniger almost literally translates to "Noble Elven Cleanser." To be more accurate, "Elven Cleanser of Noble Blood." Although Faye is not technically German, it closely resembles the Scottish Fey- "fated to die," which comes from the Middle English Feye, which has its roots in an Old English word that is sort of related to the Old High German word Feigi- "doomed." I don't know how Faye's definition wound up as "Elven," I guess all the elves died or something, but... whatever. It is kind of German, in a very indirect way. So all you name/language critics out there can stuff it.

Also, In my other story I have a character with a speech impediment. I HATE writing that character's dialogue because I always have to go back and make sure it is perfect. So, I will not be trying to show Faye's accent. Just remember that every time she talks it sounds like angels, or something.


	2. Focused

This chapter's songs (I couldn't pick between them):

"Blow Me Away" by Breaking Benjamin

"How Far We've Come" by Matchbox Twenty

AN/ I now remember why I don't write in past tense. I SUCK AT IT. So if I accidentally switch the tenses up, I don't care. Deal with it. I'm sick of rewriting and editing the same things over and over again.

_Recap: So when, halfway through the study session and about an hour after my dad left, a strange pounding came from the front door I was _completely _unprepared._

We were both siting at the low coffee table going over notes and the sound made us jump. My subconscious was screaming that there was something wrong, but I was still in fantasy world with Faye and completely forgot that I had been anticipating a zombie invasion for two weeks. I got up and went to the door, then looked through the peephole to see who it was. From a brief glimpse I saw a large, hairy and bloodstained man raise his arms. There was a sudden movement and I heard a cracking of wood, then the thick metal door smashed into my nose and I was flung back into the stairs behind me. I felt blood pooling in my nose immediately and I heard Faye scream, but I tried not to let either of those distract me because then the zombie, I knew what it was by then, lurched through the now open door. I scrambled up the stairs on my back, aiming a kick at its head as I did, and was able to get out of reach before it had a good hold on me.

For some reason the big picture sorted itself out in my mind right then. I remembered my plans which had been half-forgotten, the thirty pack of water, about how long the food in the cupboards would last, basically everything _except _the machete that would take about fifteen seconds for me to get. Instead, the first weapon I thought of was the large kitchen knife that was sitting in a slotted block of wood on the counter, which had a zombie between me and it. I picked myself up, clutching my now gushing nose, and yelled, "Faye! Stay away from the doors!"

About seven steps up the stairs, which was pretty much halfway, there was a big dictionary that my dad had set there so that I would remember to put it away in my upstairs study room. I waited until the Zed-head was about two steps up the stairs, uncomfortably close, to grab the book and throw it as hard as I could at its face. It fell back down the stairs and partway out the door. As it was trying to get back up I hurdled the banister of the stairs and ran through the kitchen, grabbing the knife in the process. It made a satisfying _shhhinnng _as it left the wooden block. I didn't take the time to look at it, long with a good bit of blade at the hilt that narrowed slowly to a point, because Faye was in view and I didn't want to scare her.

I should describe the apartment I was living in at the time, because you're probably lost with all of the directions. It was a two story apartment that was 20'x40' per floor. The entire building was long and straight, with several of these apartments end-to-end, and the outer walls were brick. The bottom floor was a living room, which had a window and the back door, that took up half of the space on that floor and the rest was a narrow kitchen and hallway that were parallel, sandwiching a tiny bathroom. The kitchen had a small window at the end, on the same wall as the front door. The stairs ran along the hallway and the thick banister that I had hopped over melded with the ceiling as the stairs rose. The upstairs consisted of 3 bedrooms, 1 full bathroom, a linen closet and a cubby space/study room that had a trapdoor to the attic. I had never been in the attic.

So as I'd moved into the living room to quickly check on Faye I knew that the zombie was going to be coming down the hallway at my right. I asked her if she was okay, sounding muffled because my nose was completely clogged with blood, and she gave me a quick nod, eyes locked on the large knife in my hand. _So much for not scaring her, _I thought. Then there had been a long, sickening moan and I turned to fully face to hallway. There was a slow shuffling coming down it and I got ready to make a lunge for the thing's head. But then I thought, _What if Faye doesn't know about zombies? She is already scared, given __the look she gave the knife. If I attack outright she might think I just killed a normal person_

As I was thinking this it stepped into the room, arms up and moaning again. I yelled, "STOP!" but of course it didn't do anything. I held my ground and it swung a wild arm at me, but I jumped back and then lunged forward again, my left hand pushing it sideways while my right hand drove the first half of the blade straight into its eye. As soon as the knife was in I jumped back, barely missing another flail of its arms. As I moved away it raised its arms again, completely unfazed. I whispered a curse, then pushed both of its outstretched arms up with one hand, and I jabbed the knife with the palm of my other hand, pushing the blade deeper, then quickly twisting it. If it hadn't died from the final twist it would have had me pinned because I was well within reaching distance then, but it collapsed.

After waiting a second to make sure it was dead I pulled the knife free and wiped it on a clean part of the thing's tan khakis. I stood and looked back at Faye, holding my nose again because of the bleeding, and to my horror she looked like she wanted to bolt at the first opportunity. My only consolation was that she was looking at the dead thing on the floor, not at me, with that look. I knew there where things that needed to be done, but Faye was first priority, so I asked thickly, "Do you know what that is?"

She didn't respond for a second, then blinked, and as if she hadn't heard me said, "What?"

"Do you know what that is?" I asked again. "It's not human, it's a zombie. I don't know how, but it is a dead body that has come back to-

"What? Yes, I know what I zombie is, I have seen horror films depict them before, it is just that... I actually _see _one. _Right there. _In_ real_ _life. _I... I do not know..." She trailed off there, and I jumped in to get her to focus.

"Alright, well we need to figure out when your dad is coming to get you, so see if you can call him. I'm going to seal this place up like a clam, so you will be safe here until he comes." I stopped there, not mentioning the "if he comes" part, because it looked like that was what she was thinking already and I didn't want to make her more upset.

I grabbed the now _dead_ dead body (I know it's been done a million times already, but I can't help myself) and half-dragged half-carried it out the wide open front door. After dropping it a good ten feet away I got back inside quickly and turned to look out through the door again. It was just starting to get dark. The minivan that served as my dad's "bus" was parked in the parking lot about twenty feet from the corpse, an easy run if only I had the keys. My dad probably had them on him and I didn't know how to hot-wire anything back then. Past that I saw chaos. The closest zombie in sight was part of a small group about a block away, visible between the cookie-cutter buildings, identical to mine, that were on the other side of the parking lot, but there were more people running around than zombies at that point. Some were bloody, some limping. My next-door neighbor, obscenely fat and loud as hell, was trying to get her screaming kid into a pickup. I'd always hated her, since it was obvious that she should never have been allowed to be a parent at all, and I felt sorry that the kid was going to die either in a car accident due to the chaos or be eaten by zombies because his idiot mother didn't have enough of a brain to stop and think about what the hell she was doing. They must have just gotten out the door, or the zombie that had busted through my door would have gone after them. I'd also noticed that my dad had propped open the metal outer door to try and catch a breeze and he had forgotten to close it before he'd left. I closed it, hoping that the thin, rigid metal would slow the zombies down.

I closed the big inner metal door. It didn't stay shut because part of the wall that it latched to had been torn away, I then knew why most people had dead-bolts, and went to the kitchen. I wadded a tissue up and stuffed it in my nose, put the knife back into the slotted wooden block, then from one of the drawers I pulled a hammer, a half-full 250 pack of four inch nails and a few stray 2 inch nails. I went to the double sliding-door closet next to the front door and pulled on one of the doors. The crappy sliding tracks in those apartments were notoriously fragile, so as expected, it came off easily. I moved the thick piece of wood over to the front door, turned it sideways and pressed it up against the metal below the ruined handle. I heard Faye dialing a number while I positioned the thick door, but the sound of me nailing it to the wall drowned out the message she left. After the first door was securely in place with fifteen nails holding it to the wall I went back and did the same thing to the other sliding door, this time placing it above the handle and just below the peep-hole. I knew that wouldn't hold up to more than a single Zed-head, so I went to the living room, moved the phone off of the "dinning room" table that we never used, dumped everything else off unceremoniously by tipping it over and moved it to the front door. I propped it up against the door and used the 2 inch nails to nail it to the boards. This was so the nails didn't hit the metal of the door. One of the table's legs stuck out into the walkway a few feet about chest height so I grabbed the offending leg and put all of my weight on it. It snapped off easily, and with a strangely satisfying _crunch_. To add a bit more to the barricade I slid the nearby bookcase up against the whole thing, books facing the table so that they could not fall out. Finally, I used the hammer's claw to pry off the six foot long 2x6 and the eight foot long wooden pole that served as handrails for the stairs and wedged them between the bookshelf and one of the stairs, making sure the stairs were still open enough to walk up and down as well.

After finishing my project I checked on Faye. She was sitting on the couch holding the phone, still looking shocked. "Did you reach him?"

"No, he did not answer. I left a message."

"Alright, well we need to focus on staying alive right now, and that means blocking off all of the ground floor. Either we can board up the windows and doors, or we barricade the stairs. Since all of the food is downstairs, I think we should try to keep the downstairs open as long as possible. We can always fall back if we need to. The front door is boarded up, so if they get in it will be from the back and I hope we will have time to lug some food up the stairs before we block them off. There are a bunch of things that need to be done, but are you up to some heavy lifting? The faster we get that window-" I pointed to the big-ass living room window directly behind the couch she was sitting on, "secure, the safer we will be."

"Um, yes, I am just a bit..." She trailed off and shook her head, as if trying to rid herself of the "What If's" that were almost certainly going through her head.

"Faye, I know this is difficult, but we need to focus on the here-and-now, because speculating won't help and we can't do anything about this mess except try to survive it." I know it sounded harsh, and harsh words on top of harsh reality usually only makes things worse, but it was what she needed to get her head in the game.

"Okay, so what should we do now?" she asked. She still looked scared shitless, but the shock was gone, at least for the moment, and from the look on her face I could tell she was starting to think clearly again.

I thought for a second, following her example, and a question ran through my mind. Why had the first zombie been attracted to my apartment? I looked at the kitchen and saw that the light was on and shining through the kitchen window, visible to anyone in that direction. "Well, we need to turn off the lights so we don't attract more zombies." My thoughts turned to the large window at that point. "Then I will go out the back. There is a metal picnic table about forty feet away and I'm going to prop it up against the outside of that window," I pointed at the living room window again. "There are other things to do, too, like get all of the long lasting food upstairs in case we need to abandon the downstairs, and fill up the bathtub with water so we can bottle it later. You can stay here and get started on that or come with me. I don't think we should split up for any amount of time, it seems like a cliché mistake to make in this horror film-like situation, but I understand if you want to stay here as well. The chance of dyeing skyrockets as soon as you walk out the door."

My comment seemed to really get her brain working, making real-time practical decisions and planning ahead, because her reply was, "No, I will go with you. We should not leave each other's sight, the risk is too great. What if one of us was snuck up on? Either by a zombie or someone who wished us harm, either can be avoided more easily with two sets of eyes."

Considering that was what I had been about to say, I didn't argue. For a second I wondered if she had read the same book about surviving a zombie apocalypse. I decided to ask when there was time, which was _not_ right then. "Okay, let's go shut off the upstairs lights first, because they will keep attracting attention, then we can get going." She nodded to this. When we got to my room I remembered the machete and before we shut off the light I reached into the abyss that was my closet and grabbed it. Luckily it was at the front with the water, where it had been shoved when I forgot about it.

"That looks like a better weapon than a kitchen knife," Faye said, eyeing it with approval. I followed her gaze and saw, too, that the much longer, slightly curved blade looked more like a weapon, something _deadly,_ than a utensil that you would use if your steak was a bit tough. I slung its sheath over my shoulders so that it hung off my back, with its handle in easy reaching distance over my right shoulder.

We went back downstairs and I was about to put the knife back into its slotted wooden block when I asked, "So, do you want something to defend yourself with? This knife isn't the best, but it is better than nothing."

"Do you really think I need it?" She asked, wide eyed in fear yet serious and practical.

"Well, not for what we are about to do, that should be quick and easy, but we need to get you something to fight with soon. Sooner or later you are going to be in a position where you will have to fight for your life and a weapon is helpful in those situations."

Her reaction to this was strange. She tensed up and her shoulders hunched slightly, her eyes started darting around, mostly to the window that we were going to be boarding up, and her lips started moving, like she was thinking so intently that it was almost out loud. She looked like she was either preparing herself for a life-and-death situation or she was about to have a nervous breakdown, and since she seemed to me like a strong-willed person I was not sure which was more likely. Then she said, in a clear voice, "I'll take it."

I handed her the knife, watched her for a second to make sure she wasn't about to stab me with it, then I went to peak out the living room window. There was nothing in sight so I said, "Okay, it's clear. Lets go, and stay quiet." I opened the door, and shut it behind us so a stray zombie couldn't sneak in while we were gone.

About thirty feet in front of the door was a chain link fence that ran parallel with the building, creating a narrow "backyard" with the street on the right and a pathway that went around to the parking lot on the left. Each house had a small patio area that was separated from its neigbors by large wooden dividers. The area was fairly enclosed, so I wasn't overly worried as I edged to the end of one of the dividers and peaked around it. The street was clear and there was no one in sight. The big metal table, which had two attached metal benches on either side, was about two apartments down farther from the street and, having moved it before, I knew it was heavy. I motioned for Faye to follow and we ran to it as quietly as possible. It was just off the patio of the second to last house and I noticed that in that house's storage space, which had its door open, were a large number of power tools. I knew that the power was going to be out soon, but I looked at the wooden dividers again and saw that they were only held into the ground with two 6x6 beams on each end. If they could be cut the whole ten foot tall, twelve foot wide arrangement of wood could be pushed up against the window with the metal table, making it much more durable.

With this idea in mind, I said, "Hold on, Faye," and went to the pile of hardware. It was not organized at all, but lying in a mess of sharp edges and points, so I grabbed the first thing that I found. I did not know what it was called then and I still don't now, but it was obvious it was a cutting tool and the blade was eight inches long. Other than that I noted that it would not be efficient at killing zombies. I pulled it out of the small room, making only a little more noise that was wanted at the time, and went back to my house. Faye followed, giving me a questioning look when I caught her eye. I plugged the saw-thing into the outlet next to the back door and went to work cutting the wooden beams of the dividers closest to my door. Faye figure it out when she saw what I was doing and stood about five feet away, keeping watch and ready to catch the heavy wooden wall should it fall on me. There was a moment of panic when a car drove by on the street, making us both jump. The saw-thing made a lot of noise, but there was still a lot of noise from all of the chaos that was just out of sight, so I hoped it wouldn't attract anything.

We got the two dividers that bordered my patio cut and move up against the window in ten minutes and we went back for the metal table after that. It was pulled over and tipped up against the dividers easily enough and we went back inside feeling much safer. Only very little light filtered through the large window after that, which, though dark and dreary, reminded us that our protection was in place and we were safe from outside threats.

"So," Faye said as we rested in the living room, panting from the hard work and adrenaline, "now we are safe, mostly. What is the next thing we need to do?"

I waited a moment, trying to catch my breath and remember what to do, then said, "We should sort the long lasting foods and get them upstairs, along with figuring out about how long they will last us. We need to get rid of the foods that won't last, or else the smell with attract the zombies, along with rats and other things that we don't want to have to deal with. Other than that we need to plan an escape route in case we are overwhelmed, and what to do if we meet other survivors," I paused, wondering how she was going to take the next item, "and where you are going to sleep." I moved on quickly. "On top of all that, I'm sure I'm forgetting or haven't anticipated a few things, so we will have to deal with whatever those things are when they come along. But, before any of that, we should watch the news. They probably have some useful information, although we probably shouldn't count on it to heavily in case they are wrong, and once the power goes out we will be pretty much cut off, so we should learn as much as we can now."

AN/ I hope the fact that this is really long will compensate for the fact that it took forever to post. Not that anyone cares, there have only been 10 views in two weeks. Whatever.


	3. Prepared

"Let The Bodies Hit The Floor" by Drowning Pool for the begining

"M+M's" by Blink-182 for the end

_Recap: "__But, before any of that, we should watch the news."_

So then we watched the Yonkers broadcast. It was horrible. At first it looked good, with all of the soldiers and tanks. The first few minutes were complete slaughter, with the tanks and planes taking the Zed-Heads out like it was nothing, but the swarm just kept getting closer to the line of soldiers. Then the big guns started running out and the camera went to a ground crew showing the zombies falling from just the soldiers rifles, the front of the group if undead going down before being pushed out of the way by the others behind them. It reminded me of a cresting wave. The camera goes to a helicopter and next thing you know a shudder runs through the entire force of soldiers, I'm guessing from something they could see on their HUD, and most of them turned and shot at about a half dozen zombies that had somehow gotten behind them and pinned a guy. That was when I learned not to let a zombie get a good hold on you. By the time they turned back to the hoard that was approaching, it was too late, and everything went downhill from there. It just scared Faye, so once the whole fiasco was drawing to a close and they started firebombing I just turned it off.

That night, after I quickly reassured Faye of our complete safety to quell any fears the news may have spawned, we filled the bathtub, sinks and any containers that we could find with water, looked up some information about basic survival (actually that was all her, she was better at understanding diagrams and the logic behind them. Engineer, remember?), made up the guest room for her, and sorted out all of the food. We ate as much of the food that needed refrigeration as we could so it wouldn't be wasted, which left several cupboards full of canned foods, pasta, cereal, apples and other longer lasting foods. After that we made a quick and uneventful trip out the back to the dumpster with everything that would go bad so the spoiling food wouldn't attract anything. Again, we went together, but it was dark by then and we used that to our advantage. When we were back in the house, I looked at the clock and saw that it was pretty late, so that was when we went to bed.

As I lie there on my bed, window opened a crack to hear if anything was banging on the back door directly below me, I thought about the situation. I immediately detected a flaw in the houses defenses, the back door. A zombie could push it off its hinges as easily as the front door. That was what I would do tomorrow, I thought. Then my mind wandered to Faye, and the situation I found myself in with her. All afternoon we had barely left each other's sight. I was wary of what affect this would have on us. It would get very annoying for her very quickly, I was sure. Thankfully, in the face of disaster my nervousness had disappeared, I guess my subconscious had finally gotten with the program, so I would not be fumbling for words or tripping over my feet because she was looking, or things like that. Still, the prospect of living in the same house as a girl, with no parental supervision and no social taboos now that the world was ending, was both frightening and appealing. I tried not to think about the appealing part. This was because, first, I tried not to think about friends that way, and second, Faye was in the guest room, which was adjacent to mine, so, unlike when I was alone in the house, thinking of things like that would get me nowhere fast. With this very pointedly _not_ on my mind, I fell asleep.

...

I woke to screeching of tires and before I could fully wake up there was an ENORMOUS explosion. Something cut my face as I jolted into a sitting position, shooting a look at my alarm clock out of habit, and saw that it was 1:36 just before the small red numbers flashed out. Through my window, which had shattered, streamed a wavering light, like one made by a fire, and it lit up my room and made everything shift and flutter with shadows. This illusion of movement kept my eyes franticly searching for a target as my hands blindly sought the machete next to the mattress. Once I had it I finally concluded that there wasn't anything in my room and I tried looking out the window, but was blinded by a bright glare. Just then I heard Faye yell, so, having slept in a pair of worn sweats, I rushed out of my room and over two feet to the door of Faye's. I hit the light switch, not that it did anything, and squinted through the brightness to see Faye lying on the bed, looking fearfully at me with the kitchen knife in her hand.

"Are you okay?" I said loudly, realizing then that I couldn't hear myself as well as normal. I guess she could hear me because she said something and nodded. "Good," I replied, lowering my voice so as not to attract any zombies. Then I said , "Alright, we need to check on the downstairs. Come on."

In case the two feet of wood and metal in front of the living room window had been somehow damaged, we quickly started piling heavy things in front of the it, like the couch and a really big desk-like thing that my dad always used to put the Christmas cards on. As we were doing this my hearing slowly came back, and the dull roaring of the fire not even a block away was very noticeable. It just made everything a bit more stressful, so the back door reinforcement got moved from "uh, maybe tomorrow" to "holy shit, I've got to do this right now." I used the power saw from earlier as a handsaw to cut another one of the closet doors into planks (there were a bunch of those double-door closets like the one i had cannibalized to barricade the front door). It was difficult because the blade had not been made for that kind of use, but I managed. While I was doing this Faye was looking intently at the back door, seemingly lost in thought, and when I was done she told me where to nail the pieces of door. It didn't take long, and when we were done there was a sturdy crossbar bracing the door that could be removed if we needed to get out. Then we used another closet door, they were proving very useful, to board up the kitchen window, which had also been accidentally overlooked. The fact that we were missing things and making mistakes was very unnerving, and neither of us mentioned it, even though I could tell by the look on her face that Faye was thinking along the same lines.

Feeling a bit safer, we went upstairs and looked out my window. From my bedroom window you can see over the tall fence that confines the communal backyard to the backs of the buildings that line Main Street. From between two of the buildings we could see that on the other side of Main Street, where there used to be a gas station, a huge fire was billowing out of control. The wind wasn't blowing and there was a wide street and two brick buildings between us and it, but the scale and intensity of the fire was still startling. Figuring a large fire in the black of night would attract zombies like moths, we checked the doors and windows again, just to be absolutely sure, and then decided that one of us should stay up and keep guard.

I volunteered for first watch, but then Faye said, "Um, what does guard duty entail exactly?"

"Well, I'm probably just going to sit in the kitchen and keep myself awake. From there I can see the back window, and it is close enough to the stairs that if they start getting in through the front door or window I would hear it and run upstairs," I said.

"Alright, but I'm not sure if I can sleep. Even before the explosion, I was too scared to rest easily. Now I'm not even sure if I can shut my eyes. Ca- can I sleep somewhere closer to you, uh, so I know I'm safe?"

"Um, sure," was my genius answer. So then we started discussing the arrangements. Since only one of us would be sleeping at a time, we didn't need more than one bed, and we decided to put it in the living room near the kitchen for the same reasons I wanted to stay in the kitchen, so that if there was an attack there would be enough time to get to the stairs. So we moved my dad's mattress (it was the softest), box spring and blankets out of his room down to the living room, leaving the bed frame behind because it was too much hassle, and Faye went to sleep on it immediately, fully clothed right in the middle of the living room.

Now, I'll try to be honest with you here, but you have to understand that I'm going to paint myself in the best light possible. I was _supposed _to watch her sleep, so that zombies didn't get her! That was the point. Really! She _wanted_ me there, to watch over her and make sure she was safe! It calmed her and made it able for her to sleep. So I was just doing my job. It's not like a zombie was going to get in and I was going to miss it just because I wasn't really looking at the windows. Add that to fact that watching her made it easier for me to stay awake (cough-cough), and you've got yourself a win-win situation.

So I stayed awake that night, my eyes adjusting quickly to the near-black room. There were no lights on and no one was making any noise, so nothing would attract zombies, but I stayed alert anyway. I could still clearly hear the fire, along with the usual sounds of yelling, random gunshots and the ocasional moaning zombie, but it was muffled by the debris in the window, as was the glow from the fire. I relied mostly on hearing, to allow myself the luxury of looking at Faye, then quickly averting my gaze any time she moved so she wouldn't catch me.

...

The plan that Faye and I came up with (mostly it was me giving the ideas and her wither accepting them as reasonable or rejecting them as irrational) was to wait until the turmoil calmed down, and once the threat of crazed, panicking people had diminished we would venture out and search for a larger, better defendable and probably already inhabited place of refuge. I had a few ideas about where to find such a place, but everything was very uncertain, so I had my doubts about us being able to survive for longer than a fortnight. I brought up the fact that we would probably meet people once we left the house, and we tried to come up with a plan for dealing with an encounter. We didn't come up with anything good other than try to be peaceable, so I said, "We'll just have to hope they're not crazy."

The day after the explosion, after I got some much needed rest, we explored the trapdoor that led to the attic to see if we could get into the apartments on either side of mine. It was our only escape route if the back door was blocked off, so we needed to know if it was possible to use it to get to adjoining apartments. Opening the trapdoor was more difficult than expected, as there was an eight inch layer of fiberglass insulation, the kind that is made of tiny glass shards, on top of the opening and it rained down on me as soon as I tried to open the hatch. This resulted in me having to stop, empty one of the sinks to wash the particles off my arms, change clothes, find something to use as a filter for my mouth and try again. The second time I was bundled in clothes that would cover as much of me as possible, including a pair of swimming goggles Faye had in her backpack, and I was able to push through the insulation to the attic. I found out then that it was more of a crawl-space, and the only safe thing to crawl on were narrow beams in a sea of dangerous pink fluff, but I saw that there was an opening in the insulation on each end of the building that led to other trapdoors. Knowing this, we decided that if we needed to Faye and I would go up into the crawl-space with backpacks full of food and water (we packed those later) and would go right, to the apartment on the end of the building closest to the street. Then- well, I'll get to that later.

So we were prepared, on guard, and a bit discontented with the cold, dry food we had to eat, but most importantly, we were bored. The first two days were frantic, as I've already described. We ran around boarding things up and hoarding victuals (again, very unappetizing victuals) like chickens with our heads cut off, but after that there was nothing else to do. After a few days the chaotic noises around the house started to quiet and the sound of moaning became louder and more common, sometimes going so long that we though we had been discovered by the zombies, but we agreed that it had not been long enough to be safe leave. When we went outside the Zed-Heads would already be a major problem, we wanted all other types of danger to be long dead. So we mostly conserved our energy by playing board games I found stuffed in one of the now doorless closets, or reading the info that Faye had downloaded and printed the first night. I also found an old hand-crank radio, and we used it to see if there were any working broadcast stations. We figured any military safe zone would be announced far and wide, but all we got was a loop of "NYC's best rappa's, dawg" on one station. We figured it had been overrun while on-air and would keep playing until the power there went out. The "Radio Free Earth," or whatever it was called, the one that dished out accurate info and debunked myths, hadn't been set up yet.

It was a happy discovery when, late into the fourth day of the ordeal, Faye accidently found we still had a working natural gas connection. I, being narrow minded in a very American-like fashion, assumed that once the electricity went out, everything went out shortly thereafter. By then we knew that the tap water ran brownish-red and we decided against trying to boil it, but we did use some of the bathtub water for cooking (we still hadn't needed to use any of the bottled water). That night we cooked up a stew of- well, just stuff. It wasn't anything compared to pre-war meals, but after four days of stale tasting water and dry Honey Nut Cheerios (my dad had found them on sale a week before, so we had eight boxes), that stew was delicious. It was thick because I didn't want to use too much water, and the ingredients were thrown in based on what canned foods weren't good to eat raw, but I was surprised at how fast and easily our previous expectations of food had fallen. I don't know about Faye, but before the war I was incredibly picky about food, and it was a relief to know that, when faced with hunger, my stomach won out over my taste buds.

We ate it in the living room, sitting on the edge of the bed ignoring the three gunshots that we heard far off in the distance and the moan of alerted Zeds that followed. It was late in the day, so the zombies would be attracted to any lights, and, since we were completely dark, that meant anywhere but where we were, so we felt safe. When we were done eating there was a strange moment. We were sitting next to each other, on a comfortable bed, in a safe place, with full, warm stomachs, and we looked at each other. The fact that I was a guy and she was a girl and we were stuck here together hadn't left my mind since it had taken root that first night, but it reasserted itself then, and I think she felt it too because she caught my eye and then looked away quickly, which caused me to do the same. Then, whispering like always so the noise didn't attract zombies, she said, "Um, Jack?"

"Yes?" I whispered back, almost stuttering on the simple word in nervousness.

"Thank you, for, ah, not just, uh, not just throwing me out."

I was perturbed by this and asked, "Why would I have thrown you out?"

"Well, the way you talked about the people outside, and what we should do if we meet anyone else, it was like they are just objects to you, or obstacles. You say that we should wait until the zombies eat all of them, so that there is less competition for us, and less danger. I see the logic, it helps us survive, but, well- what happens if it is a logical for you to leave me behind." There was a short pause, but then she added, "Or even right now. The supplies would last twice as long without me here."

"Faye, I do see everyone outside those boarded up doors as competition, and as possibly hostile, but I'm not about to forget that they are humans that are trying to survive, just like us. The reason we should be wary of others is because, around here, people are more inclined to shoot first and think later, and that was before law and order collapsed. This makes it more dangerous to try and interact with them, but we should at least give them a chance. If we can find a group of sane, rational people, then we will be a thousand times better off. That is why you are invaluable, and I wouldn't just leave you behind or kick you out. And about the competition, it is sad to say, but it is true that the zombies are going to kill a lot of people, and we can't change that. All we can do is use the situation to our advantage. I didn't wish for this, but I'm going to do everything I can so that we survive it."

We looked at each other for a while, reading each others expressive eyes, and finally she blinked, looked away and quietly said, "Alright."

After a few more minutes of silence I said, "I'm sorry that I gave you reason not to trust me. I should have been more clear about my priorities."

She looked back at me and said, "No, I was just overreacting. It is just that, the way you act, it made you seem- emotionless. Like you were 'in it to win it,' as you Americans say, and nothing was going to get in your way."

I chuckled then, which made her shoot a look at me, but then I said, "Well, I understand how you could see that, with me stabbing a zombie in the eye and then just walking away like it was nothing. And..." I paused there, but decided to go on, "And how I've been, I don't know, holding back, I guess. When I'm around, uh, girls, I usually act really stupid. Not intentionally, but I just mess things up a lot. Being here, with you, well... I've been trying hard not to mess up, and in doing so I've kind of, um, restrained myself, around you. That's led t me not really, uh, showing emotion, because wasn't sure if it would be the right emotion to show at the time." My speech came to a jerky halt and I faltered under her gaze, shifting away slightly. It was nothing like what I was trying to say. I wasn't getting my point across. She was going to take it the wrong way. I could feel heat on my face now, and it only made everything worse.

Her voice, frail now as well as faint, brought my eyes back to hers. She looked half surprised, half embarrassed as she said, "I make you nervous?"

"Um- yes?" I said, hoping that that was the right thing to say. Fear that I'd made a mistake overcame the nervousness that we were discussing.

It was her turn then to flush red and look away, and I couldn't help but smile. She looked so... I don't know, enchanting? Captivating? Beautiful? Cute came closest to describing the type of her appeal, but came nowhere close to showing the magnitude of it. Her black hair, just barely concealing her smiling face and keeping her plump, rosy checks out of sight, her head dipped in awkwardness that was completely unneeded, her posture, slightly slumped over in a too-large gray sweater that covered her form modestly in a way that said 'lovely' instead of the 'sexy' look most girls went for, and the look that most guys wanted.

She broke into my reverie of her by saying, even more quietly than ever, "I do not think I have ever made a boy nervous before."

My heart jumped at that and, with a sort of teasing air, I said, "Well, I don't think I've ever made a _girl _nervous before." She let out a soft giggle and turned farther way, but I caught a glimpse of red, darker than before. "Faye?" I said.

She slowly turned back to me, a slight smile on her face, and said, "Yes?"

I gingerly reached out and, ever so lightly, brushed the side of her face. She leaned into my touch, which was the confirmation I needed to push past my timidness. Staring into her eyes I said, "I don't understand why you would think you've never made a boy nervous before, you're beautiful," and slowly moved my face towards hers. We had not been particularly close, so I had to carefully edge myself over on the bed. Then, as I watched her face for any sign that would tell me to stop, my lips pressed up against hers. We tilted our heads so our noses didn't get in the way and she responded, wrapping her hands around and behind my neck. I moved closer and she clung to me, our bodies not quite touching, but we could feel each other's closeness. After a few seconds I started to think I should open my mouth and deepen the kiss, but she broke off and looked at me, pulling away slightly.

"Ryan," she said, "I- I am not, um, comfortable with, ah, with... doing..."

After she fumbled for words for a few seconds I decided to finish the sentence for her. "Doing... 'it?'" I put an emphasis on the 'it' and she nodded, looking even more embarrassed. "That's fine," I said quickly, "I don't think I'm, uh, ready for, um,_ that_ either."

This made her throw me a funny, sort of incredulous look and said, "Really? You- you do not want to do, uh, that?"

"Well, eventually, I guess. But not, um, now. I mean, I know we've been stuck in the same house for four days, but I think we should, ah, get to know each other a little better first."

There was a pause and then she said, "You really are different. Most other guys would just want to, um, you know. But you, you would wait. You are cautious, and careful, and not completely driven by testosterone."

I didn't have anything to say to that, so I just smiled and looked into her face, her wonderful grey eyes shining. After a moments hesitation she leaned in and pressed herself against me, lips connecting and chests rubbing together. This session was much more fierce and soon she, well, let's just say things went a bit French. I wrapped my arms around her back and the next thing we knew we were lying down on the bed.

I wasn't sure if I had made the move or if she had, or maybe we had both moved at the same time, but suddenly I felt the soft cushions on my side and her against my chest. I was careful not to make a move that would seem like I was trying to go farther, so we kissed and snuggled for several minutes. When I was starting to lose my breath I pulled away and said, "Um, It's getting late. Are you tired?"

"Yes, but you do not need to leave. We will hear anything attacking long before it actually gets in, so I think guard duty is a bit unnecessary."

"I agree," I said, and then she snuggled into my chest. We fell asleep that night with smiles on our faces.


	4. Cautious

_Recap: "...and then she snuggled into my chest. We fell asleep that night with smiles on out faces."_

The next several days were arguably the best days of my life. The noise outside that had been hellishly chaotic quieted greatly and we had to be even more quiet, usually not even whispering but that was easy as our mouths were usually full. Full of each other's mouths. Other than one accidental slip of the hand (I'm not going to say who's or where), we kept it to just kissing and cuddling, but we did sleep in the same bed. All of our clothes stayed on, in other words. That replaced the board games as our main form of entertainment, so boredom was taken care of. We ran out of Honey Nut Cheerios, our staple food at first because we weren't sure what was safe to eat raw, but at the one week mark we calculated that we had only used a quarter of the food. The tap water went from murky brown to nonexistent on the tenth day, so we had to start using plastic bags as toilets. We agreed that that was easier and less smelly than a bucket. The natural gas went on the twelfth day, and by then we had packed the ready-to-eat foods into two backpacks in case we needed to make a desperate escape. Also, because we always made sure our weapons never left our person, I made a crude sheath for Faye's kitchen knife out of cut-outs from a cheap brown leather jacket of my dad's that I found in the back of his closet. It wasn't very good, but at least she was able to walk around and use both hands at the same time, instead of carrying it around.

Because of all of the preparations, when the first zombie started banging on the front door well into the second week of post-apocalyptia, we were ready for any outcome we could think of. We were not sure what we did to attract attention, maybe the zombies could smell that every few days we cooked real food, but they found us, and before an hour was up there were ten of them trying to get in. We already had everything important upstairs, but we took the time to bring the bed up with us. Then we wedged a metal bed frame between the stairs and the low ceiling and piled stuff, including the queen sized bed we had been sleeping on, on top of it. We knew it would take the zombies a while to break through the first defenses, so we used the time to check and recheck our supplies. We made sure the backpacks were full of water bottles and food that could be eaten raw, the few tools and items from my original survival kit, and my dad's prescription drugs, which neither of us knew how to use properly but I thought they would be valuable trade items.

Because for the past few weeks we had been spending most of the time close together and under a comforter, we hadn't really noticed that outside our safe zone the air was getting colder. What we were wearing showed this, as it was rather thin, not being either warm or durable. Noticing that we both had on what would be considered nightclothes, I suggested that we change into clothes that were warmer, more rugged, and that had large pockets to carry things. We rifled through my dresser and closet, the moaning from outside making us jumpy and on alert. We guessed jeans would be somewhat bite-resistant, so we both wore that under other things. I picked out a pair of cargo pants to go over the jeans and a t-shirt under a hoodie with my leather jacket over it. The hoodie had a large pouch in the front and the jacket had a few pockets and seemed pretty tough as materials go. Faye found a pair of waterproof windbreaker pants for over her jeans and a tan pair of shorts that looked like a mix between khakis and cargo pants. She found one of my nicer shirts, it was a black button up dress shirt with thin brown stripes that looked way better than it sounds, a gray hoodie and over that went a winter coat of mine. While we were at it I figured fresh-smelling, clean clothes would be a valuable luxury that we could trade if we met any survivors, so I dug up another backpack and filled it with as much of my best clothes as I could. It was really lucky that my dad had just done laundry before the outbreak.

Once we had our attire picked out I realized what was about to happen and said, "Uh, I'll go change in the bathroom."

I picked up the pile of clothes and was two steps from the door when Faye said, "Jack, um, don't leave." I looked back at her, seeing her eyes widened in fear at the sound of zombies clawing their way into the house, and nodded.

We didn't face each other as we changed, but we didn't face away either. We both looked, and we both knew the other was looking, and neither of us said anything.

When we were clothed again we put on our shoes, which felt weird because we had been barefoot for so long, and got ready to go. I gave Faye the swimming goggles, because my normal glasses would protect my eyes a little from the dust and glass particles of the attic. Once we heard the zombies getting into the downstairs we filled our pockets with water bottles (we were only able to fit about half of them into the backpacks with the food, and we wound up leaving behind about six), put on the backpacks and went. We went up through the trapdoor, closing it behind us, just like planned. The trip through the attic was horrible for me, every inch of exposed skin itched and burned, but Faye had it a bit easier with the goggles protecting her eyes. When we lowered ourselves into the house we were lucky that there were no infected and we quietly searched the medicine cabinets and looked for weapons. Not wanting to be discovered and swarmed, we didn't spend long, but we found a few prescription drugs that looked like they might be useful. I put them with the clothes because they were non-essential and could be sacrificed if need be.

We went out the back because the wooden dividers kept us out of view of the small swarm around my house. Makeing sure to keep an eye out for more zombies, we quietly made our way to the street and up towards Main St. We had agreed that our first destination should be the police station next to the gas station that had exploded. I thought that, since it was the first place people would have gone, it would have been overrun with infected survivors, makeing it almost impossible to defend efficiently in the first few days of the outbreak. Either everyone inside would be dead, or everyone inside would be living dead, but we knew we would not be confronting any other survivors yet. Sure enough, when we cautiously made our way across the deserted street to the station, we found that there was not a single zombie trying to get in, confirming that there was not a single survivor in the building. The side facing the gas station had a hole in it about five feet wide, so we decided to go in there, as the doors were securely barricaded. There was a horrid smell emanating from the opening, much worse than the smell of unwashed bodies that we were gradually being desensitized too. I was wary of the possibility that we might meet a hoard of zombies inside, so we waited just outside the gaping hole and listened for shufling footsteps. After ten seconds I took a quick glance in and saw it was a garage for several firetrucks and two ambulances. I didn't see any movement so we made our way in.

AN/ I'm working on some other stories right now, but seeing how Max Brooks usually ended stories fairly early and how this was supposed to be a short story, when I start up on this one again (definitely before the end of this school year) I'll wrap it up quickly.


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